Buddhist-Muslim Tensions Spread as 8 Detainees Die in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Simmering religious and ethnic violence in Myanmar spread beyond its borders on Friday when a brawl broke out at an immigration center in Indonesia between Muslim and Buddhist detainees, leaving 8 dead and 15 wounded, officials said.

A group of 117 Rohingya refugees and 11 Buddhists accused of illegal fishing, all from Myanmar, were being held together in the same area of a government detention center in Belawan, a port city in North Sumatra Province, when fighting erupted just after midnight, said Herianto, a spokesman for Indonesia’s Department of Immigration in Jakarta.

“There were eight fishermen killed,” said Mr. Herianto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. “The injured detainees were Rohingya,” a Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar.

The disturbance erupted around 12:45 a.m., with the detainees using metal and wood from broken chairs to attack one another, according to Sabarita Ginting, an immigration office spokeswoman in Medan, the provincial capital.

The Associated Press, quoting the local police, reported that the clash began when a Muslim Rohingya confronted a Buddhist fisherman about sectarian violence in Myanmar.

The government of Myanmar said it would seek more information about the deaths. “I am not clear why the Indonesian authorities put those groups in the same place during this tense period,” said U Zaw Htay, a director with President Thein Sein’s office.

Vivian Tan, a regional spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok, said the detention center’s detainees were usually a mix of foreign asylum seekers, refugees like the Rohingya and people detained for illegal entry, like the Buddhist fishermen.

The United Nations refugees office released a statement Friday afternoon calling for calm between the groups, and urged the Indonesian authorities to act to prevent further violence, including moving detainees into community housing as soon as possible.

The brawl in the detention center underscores the tensions and deep animosity between Muslims and Buddhists that have surfaced in Myanmar as the country tries to embrace democracy after five decades of military rule.

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Indonesian police officers stood guard Friday at an immigration detention center in Belawan. Muslim refugees and Buddhist fishermen, all from Myanmar, had been held together there.CreditBinsar Bakkara/Associated Press

Regional officials expressed concern that violence within Myanmar could spill over to its Southeast Asian neighbors. At a joint two-day workshop in Jakarta on Friday on conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy, Vijay Nambiar of India, a United Nations under secretary general and special adviser on Myanmar to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, told reporters that the Buddhist-Muslim tensions needed to be controlled for regional security.

“All the governments are conscious that they can’t afford to let this kind of genie get out of the bottle,” he said. Indonesia, with the largest population of Muslims in the world, “is particularly sensitive about these implications.”

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa of Indonesia told the workshop attendees that it was difficult to discern whether a security challenge in one nation was also a regional one.

“Very rapidly, any conditions that are unstable even within countries can become at least a nontraditional type of security threat to the rest of the region,” he said. “This applies to all of us, basically.”

Tensions remain high in Yangon and other Myanmar cities, with Muslims on alert for attacks after recent rioting in the central city of Meiktila killed more than 40 people, most of them Muslims.

Since the attacks in Meiktila, which began March 20 and in some cases were led by Buddhist monks, rioting has spread to other parts of Myanmar, leaving mosques and hundreds of Muslims’ homes destroyed.

A fire in the dormitory of a Muslim school in Yangon that left 13 dead this week was attributed to a faulty electrical device but nonetheless heightened fears among the Muslim community.

Muslim organizations and human rights groups have criticized Myanmar’s handling of religious and ethnic violence during the past year, including violence in western Myanmar that has killed more than 150 people and displaced more than 100,000 people, mainly Muslims.

The government has said the violence in Rakhine State, near the border with Bangladesh, was organized by unidentified groups seeking to stir up religious hatred, but the authorities had yet to arrest any of the leaders of the attacks.

The majority of those displaced are Rohingya who have been unable to return to their villages and remain in squalid refugee camps. Not recognized as citizens in Myanmar, thousands of Rohingya have fled by boat to neighboring countries, mainly Malaysia and Indonesia, both with Muslim majorities. Thousands more have been taken in by Saudi Arabia in recent years.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Buddhist-Muslim Tensions Spread as 8 Detainees Die in Indonesia. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe